VERY MILD SPOILER ALERT FOR A FOX OF STORMS AND STARLIGHT. It’s a minor explanatory thing that comes out in chapter 9 of Fox Book, which provides motivation for a major plot point that happens in chapter 12 (there are 49 chapters).
CONTENT NOTIFICATION: Kevin’s point-of-view scenes have a lot of swearing. Sorry-not-sorry. But maybe don’t read if the f-word offends you.
Also, this is an unedited draft. Feel free to let me know in the comments if you spot typos etc, but yo: unedited draft, so read accordingly.
Catch up on Chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 7.
8: Sunny
I don’t like violence.
I know, I know: those who do not live by the sword can still die by it, to paraphrase one of my favourite fictional women (because she’s everything I’m not).
I know.
But I can’t escape its effect on me, any more than I can escape the lingering humiliation of a blush, any more than I can suppress tears of rage… Any more than I can speak my mind when spoken to, or better—or worse—yet, speak it when I’m not.
For better or for worse, violence always feels like a physical blow to my own gut, even though it’s not, even though it’s never been, even though I’ve never experienced anything worse than falling out of a tree, which happened when I was twelve.
But it’s wrong. And something in me can’t ignore how contrary it is to the very fabric of the way the universe ought to be, and something in me cries out against it, and I don’t have the shields that normal people seem to have raised about them to protect me from it, to be able to say, “Oh well, it was only one punch”, “Oh well, it isn’t real, it’s only staged for TV”, “Oh well, dude needed punching.”
Plenty of people need punching, to the logical part of my mind. But somehow, the emotional part of my brain never agrees, and I’m left feeling sick in the stomach with queasy, lingering nausea and bitterness in my throat and a desperate ache in my chest like I once knew a world that wasn’t like this, that was kind and not cruel, where no one needed punching—only I don’t live there anymore, and I’m desperately, desperately homesick.
I’m a crappy movie companion, let me tell you.
So I didn’t watch when Kevin hit Rick.
I didn’t want that image imprinted on my mind, indelible, dredged up every time I looked Kevin in the eyes forever after.
I know he was protecting the kid.
I know Rick was living up to his other nickname, the unkind one.
I know Jimmy’s an A-grade tosser and I wish with every fibre of my being I had what it takes to stand up to him, to give him a piece of my mind, to just once make him acknowledge that maybe it isn’t that everyone else in the world is the problem, that maybe—just maybe, just entertain the possibility, you don’t even have to accept it—that he could actually try harder to make the world a better place.
But I don’t. I don’t have it in me. And the part of me that hates me for that lack loves what Kevin did, applauds it.
But the rest of me still feels sick.
So I’m sitting in the science lab, surrounded by sterilised air, as vacant of natural smells as my heart is of cogent thought, and Ellie’s picking away at the corner of her exercise book near my elbow, leaving a trail of blue-lined paper over the grey-blue desk like crumbs, like she’s Gretel trying to leave a way for Hansel to follow, like maybe I could follow them down a rabbit hole to a world where things made sense, where I could detangle the pattern in all this madness and rediscover that lost world I’m homesick for.
And so I barely notice when the teacher gets out her jar of popsicle sticks, the bright red and green and blue ones, primary colours like we’re in primary school, and begins drawing names.
Until, that is, she calls out my name—and a crimson-coloured stick comes out directly next, and it’s Kevin’s, and all of a sudden we’re stuck as lab partners for the next two days while we work our way through [the experiment].
My stomach knots, hard and tight with fearful adrenalin.
I don’t want to work with Kevin.
I don’t want to not work with Kevin.
He gets up from his regular seat in the back left corner, makes his way down toward the lab bench right next to me, scoots onto the stool that scrapes a protest across the floor.
Everywhere around me, other students are getting up and moving, footsteps, chatter, the swirl of air dancing around us. Ellie’s at my elbow still, prodding me and grinning because the storm in my stomach, in my head, is invisible to her, and she doesn’t know that when I look at Kevin now, I’m filled with an unbearable need to touch him, to run my fingers through his black, black hair, and at the same time can’t stop hearing the sound of his fist hitting Rick’s face, Rick’s teeth clacking as his head snaps back.
Ellie’s gone, everyone’s gone, I’m the only student still at my desk, still confined by the neat and tidy rows of regular desks in the middle of the pale grey room while everyone else has scattered to the fringes, to the lab benches where fire burns and chemicals collide and safety’s as fragile as the plastic glasses that shield your face.
Kevin’s not looking at me. He’s hunched up with his feet on the square stool, leaning against the wall, flicking and picking and scratching at the Bunsen burner, idly switching the gas tap on and off again.
It’s that which cuts through my swirling thoughts.
Three, four, five steps and my hand closes over his. “Stop wasting the gas,” I say. “You’ll set us all on fire.”
My palm tingles against the back of his warm hand.
I can’t bear it. It’s like electricity, and it burns.
Never mind the gas. I’m already on fire.
And I still can’t meet his eye. I sit on the stool on the opposite side of the bench and fold my book open to show the experiment diagram, once again voiceless, once again unable to articulate what I really need to say.
Keep reading: Chapter 9
(P.S. Happy western New Year!)